The artist Cécile B. Evans created A man in progress as part of an expansive work entitled Amos’ World¹ (2017-2019). Amos’ World was produced as a farce of a television series over a period of two years, in which the ‘episodes’ outline a world - namely, the failed, Brutalist housing project by Amos, an egocentric architect. Evans describes A man in progress as a fragment of this world, as “part of an ongoing series of satellite sculptures, performances, and image-based works that unfold as reimagined fragments of the production, and the universe-building, of Amos’ World”¹

The hands of the man in progress are of hand-carved clay and wood; the masks are sculpted with 3D technology and then painted by hand.² The mask is that which serves as the face of the architect Amos.  In his own words, he wants to “build something important. I want to change the world. I want to express myself.”³ The complexity of human interactions unfold in the ‘episodes’ and present, quite precisely, these all-too-human qualities. For, as the artist commented in 2016, “in the last twenty years we’ve lived in a society that really favors individualism and the idea that each person is unique and special.  I think that within the work I’m more interested in not being that special, in loving the same things that everyone loves, of having the same fears or desires.” ⁴

Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2021 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)